Audience targeting gets sharper on social media
Social media — LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc, — what are they really good for when it comes to business — whether it’s B2B or B2C? Until very recently, business saw social media principally as a route and a means to get closer to customers via greater ‘engagement’ and to provide insights and even transparency into their business operations. That is, to open up and socialise the business. Social media was also seen as an opportunity to express the personality of a business — to put a warm, friendly human face to the organisation.
But things are changing. Businesses can now harness social media platforms not only to do all of the above but also build relationships with potential customers by producing and distributing high quality and highly relevant content through the platforms.
Social media can be less of a friendly chat with stakeholder audiences and more a focused conversation on something of significance and value to the audience. People learnt about social media quickly and business is catching up fast.
Social media provides incredible opportunities for the distribution of branded content — and so brand visibility — that just didn’t exist before. The potential impact of this on businesses which choose to take advantage of the opportunity is huge.
Businesses can now create a rich, interactive and engaging blend of text articles, ‘how to’ guides and e-books, podcasts and videos that harness the power of social media and reflect the way it is used and consumed, to target audiences of potential customers, customer influencers and other opinion formers.
Platforms like LinkedIn allow businesses to target B2B customer audiences by industry, company size, specific job role and responsibility, location as well as more generic items such as age and gender, enabling businesses to make sure their brand messages reach those they want to reach. Because the channel is very focused there is little or no wastage which means that this form of marketing is more cost-effective than a traditional ‘spray and pray’ marketing message delivered through traditional media.
Facebook also offers similar targeting options and is slightly more enhanced and focused, given all the other types of information they know about us all. Things like family/marital status, where we used to live, ethnicity, interests, provide even greater targeting opportunities and richer/more engaging content options. But it doesn’t stop here. Facebook allows you to create ‘look-a-like’ audiences that match the criteria of those individuals who are either already customers of — or have interacted with — your business.
Look-a-like audiences are an incredible way to reach even new potential customers based on similar traits of those who already are.
Like Google, Facebook and Twitter also provide retargeting opportunities. This means those people who visit your website can be tracked and then targeted at any time in the future.
Tracking visitors to your website
How are look-a-like audiences created? There are two main ways. The first is to track individual visitors to your website and assume that they have not found your website by mistake. Facebook then maps those visitors to their Facebook accounts and once a critical mass of visitors to your site who have Facebook accounts is reached, they have enough information to create an audience of similar individuals. This becomes especially powerful if a business has website traffic of say 2,000 people — Facebook will identify an additional 30,000 to 60,000 others who share the same traits, mirroring your existing customers.
The other way of doing this is less scientific in many respects but equally powerful. Businesses can also upload customer databases and email addresses directly into Facebook and Twitter, and the platforms will then match these emails to customer accounts and allow you to place targeted messages on those users’ newsfeeds or even create a look-a-like audience based on this. Another extremely powerful tool.
Like Google, Facebook and Twitter also provide retargeting opportunities. This means those people who visit your website can be tracked and then targeted at any time in the future (within minutes if you want) by the business with advertising messages relevant to the page of your website that the user was on during the website visit.
What better way to remind those who visited your website but perhaps did not make an inquiry or purchase at the time? All this is achievable through social media channels — and for much smaller marketing budgets than was previously possible.
Once these social media tactics are employed, the ability to generate a constant flow of new leads for your business becomes much more manageable and predictable. In fact, once a model has been found, it’s a bit like a tap where increasing the ad budget will clearly result in more leads.
The old advertising conundrum — ‘I know half of my advertising doesn’t work but I don’t know which half’ — just doesn’t arise/apply any more.